


Moonlight

by Phantom



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, the buried moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom/pseuds/Phantom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Buried Moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aquila](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquila/gifts).



> Hi, Aquila! We've never met but I took a look through your journal and I just wanted to say that you're kind of awesome. (Also, I really must pick up a copy of The Hunger Games...)
> 
> Thank you for this prompt. It's been a long time since I've had this much fun writing _anything_.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

There are three stories dear to my mothers: there is the one from the book with the well-loved cover, the story of the girl and the great white bear I could recite from memory long before I could ever read; there is the one they tell me as summer bleeds into autumn, the story of how I came to be their daughter; and there is the one Mama will tell on the nights the moon is brightest while Mother holds me on her lap, the story of how, not so long ago, the moon vanished from her place in the sky.

She always starts the same way. My mama points with one hand towards the pale light that shines through the frosted over window.

"You see that?" she says. "The night is lovely always, and tonight the moon is bright and full, but it is... different, than it used to be.

"Moonlight is a blessing," she adds. "She guides us so that so we may find our way and not lose ourselves on the roads, as I did once."

But that part comes later.

"Not so many years ago now, the moon was content to just shine on up there in her sky. She had never left her place to come down to the world. Truth be told, the thought of doing so frightened her and she was happy to stay where she was. But her friend the nearest star, she was restless, and would jump down to the earth just to see it.

"The nearest star, she came to the world many times and she saw many things. She spied from the cover of a forest just off the road to watch the travellers, and she took back to the sky with her tales of the cool, crisp air and the echo of their songs.

"'There are more of them on the roads when you are lively,' the star told her friend the moon as she listened curiously, 'but on the nights of the new moon when you are dark and still I watched them wrap their cloaks around themselves in fear that they would be set upon by some evil.'

"Well, as for the moon, now her curiosity was piqued. She determined she would just have to see for herself, and so on the night of the next new moon she wrapped the night around her shoulders and tiptoed down in the shadows between the stars.

"You have to remember that she had spent her entire life in the company of the stars. It was too dark for her liking all the way down here. There were those faint little shimmers even we can see from the stars, and she thought it was really quite pretty the light flickered across the water, but she found herself doing as the star had described and hugging her cloak to her."

Mama pauses for breath and a sip of water. "It was all an accident," she continues. "The moon was beset by no evils. She was only unfamiliar with the land around her and she lost her footing in the soft mud and slipped. She hadn't even noticed the incline was there until she landed in the pond at the bottom of it, soaked with the mud and chill and the icy water.

"She was caught fast on some branches and weighed down by her wet cloak. In her struggle to free herself, her hood slipped back some and she was all aglow in the night, a bright light calling towards her any soul who wandered by.

"It was now that she first encountered the traveller, a woman late on her way home that night. She'd walked these roads all her life and she knew them well, but it was dark as could be on this night and her thoughts were elsewhere."

I always wonder where the woman had been and what she was thinking about, but Mama never says.

"As she drew nearer the place where the moon had fallen, she saw the gentle glow and stepped closer in curiosity. The moon struggled harder now, for she saw the shadow of the traveller approaching. She knew that the traveller would be hurt or worse if she fell, and she hadn't come down here for that.

"The cloak slipped all the way from shoulders as she tugged and the traveller paused. Her eyes fell downward and, blinded by the light of the moon, she squinted and took a step back. She wasn't sure what she was looking at, and it frightened her.

"She turned and returned home that night, and thought nothing of the darkened sky, for it was the night of the new moon.

"It was only over the course of the next week that she, with the rest of the world, noticed how odd it was, that the moon hadn't risen. She began to worry then, wondering why the moon had left them. What could she have gone?

"It was on one of these nights that the traveller found herself on the roads again. She brought a lantern with her this time, and she, too, met no evils. There was only a woman cloaked in the color of the deepest night. The traveller paused, raising the lantern to better see the woman's face.

"'Are you lost?' she asked.

"'No,' came the answer, 'but my friend came this way not so long ago and I've had no word from her. I fear she might be lost.'

"'Where did you see her last?' asked the traveller woman.

"'I sent her this way,' said the cloaked woman, drawing back her hood. 'The friend I speak of is the moon. She should have returned many days ago.'

"The traveller stood thinking for a minute. She had somewhere to be, but, well... the moon had vanished. 'When did you see her last?'

"'On the night of the new moon,' said the woman, who you must have guessed by now to be the nearest star.

"'I was on the roads that night,' said the traveller.

"'And did you see her, the moon?' asked the star.

"The traveller paused to think, then, and remembered that mysterious light she had been too frightened to approach.

"'I believe I may have,' she said. 'Come with me.'

"So together, they made their careful way down that incline the traveller had nearly stepped off of, all the way down to the pond at the bottom. And together, they felt their way through the icy water until their hands tangled in the wetness of the moon's cloak.

"And they hauled her up and dragged her out of the water, all of them shivering.

"'Thank you, but I'm all right', the moon insisted, when the traveller woman and the star pushed her to sit. 'I've been gone too long. I must return.'

"'No,' said her friend the nearest star. "You need some time to rest first.'

"'There are healers in my family,' said the traveller. 'Please, come with me. You can stay with us until you've recovered.'

"'But there must be a moon,' she protested. 'Who will be the moon, if not me?'

"'I will be,' said the nearest star. 'I will shine for you, until you are ready to return. Your other friends, too. We will take it in turns.'

"And so the moon went with the traveller, and the star returned to light the night sky in her friend's place. And so it was, for awhile."

Mama stops the story here, always.

"But," I protest. "That's not the end of the story. What happened to the moon?"

Mother finishes.

"The moon, she did go with the traveller to her family home, and they did take good care of her until she grew stronger. But she and the traveller grew fond of each other in time and she saw all the sights the star had told her of, and when she was well enough to return she found she didn't want to just yet. So she asked her friend the star for just awhile longer.

"And the star? Did she agree?"

"Yes," says Mother. "She agreed."

"So what happened to the moon?"

"The moon..." Mother smiles, sadly. "When the traveller woman leaves, she must too. But until then, they live."


End file.
